Vignettes of San Francisco eBook

Idly we glimpse faces that pass us in the procession
that meets ours. We pass them and are never the
wiser for the struggle and tragedy that may be going
on behind their show of brave masks. A man clutching
his last dime and wondering whether to spend it for
rolls and coffee or coffee and rolls. A business
man absorbed and a lady pondering deeply some detail
of her dress. A young girl with soft un-massaged
chin hurrying to keep a tryst with her “friend,”
and country folks, their feet sore on the unaccustomed
pavements, glad to be going home soon.

It is such an orderly procession and although they
all seem to be walking along forever, there is an
order in their going and each is on his way.
Each one is free to go to his own place and yet no
one is free. No one is free to leave the procession
once he gets into it. Once a man is born he’s
done for.

Let him veer one iota from that procession and soon
there will come rumbling up to the curb a big black
Maria and off he’s whisked away from his fellows.
Let him but get into the wrong house or take the wrong
overcoat or chuck the wrong person under the chin —
Pff! Let him forget where the long procession
leads and wander about a free spirit and his wanderings
will lead him to the madhouse.

I love to be one of the procession that marches forever
up and down Market street, such a brave procession.

Where the Centuries Meet

She was a tourist and she had just finished Sing Fat’s.
As she passed out of the door she said smugly to her
companion — “I don’t see anything
so wonderful here.”

I was standing right there and said I: “Madame,
if you have been through Sing Fat’s and have
failed, to see anything wonderful then you should go
home and give yourself the Benet test which is used
to test the intelligence of children.”
Oh, of course, I didn’t say this so that the
lady could hear. The bravest speeches we humans
make are never aloud. Then I continued:
“Madame, you may travel far in mileage but you
will never take anything back to Dingville, Kansas,
richer than a souvenir ash tray.”

Why, just to take a trip from Sing Fat’s to
the White House is a tremendous journey if one has
the perceiving faculty. In Sing Fat’s a
bit of old Cloissonne, tiny pieces of enamel on silver,
done with infinite pains by hand labor, perhaps centuries
ago, grown beautiful with age. In the White House
georgette flowers, exquisite things made for the passing
minute, a whiff and a whim and off they go. Just
in these two there is a meeting of the centuries,
Handcraft Days and the Machine Age — B. C. and
A. D. — the oldest civilization in the world
and the newest.